Photographic processors come in a variety of shapes and sizes from large wholesale photographic processors to small micro-labs. As photographic processors become more and more technologically sophisticated, there is a continued need to make the photographic processor as user-friendly and as maintenance-free as possible.
Due to the increased throughput of processors such as circular processors, which preferably process one roll of film at a time, it is necessary to remove the processed film from the processing chamber of the processor to permit the processing of another roll or strip of film. The removed processed film then gets dried and delivered to a scanner. However, the scanner speed may be slower than the processing speed of the processor, so that the scanning of the next roll of processed film as well as the film processing operation needs to be delayed to wait for the scanning operation.